Bayer Loses Fight Over Chemicals EU Blamed For Killing Bees (bloomberg.com) 50
Bayer AG lost its fight to topple a European Union ban on controversial insecticides that regulators blame for killing honeybees. Bloomberg reports: The EU Court of Justice dismissed the appeal, finding there were no legal errors in the European Commission's decision to impose restrictions on the substances' use, based on concerns that the chemicals posed "high acute risks for bees" and "the survival and development of colonies in several crops." Bayer and Syngenta AG in 2018 already lost a first round in court after telling judges that the EU ban on three so-called neonicotinoids forced farmers to revert to potentially more harmful chemicals. Bayer appealed one more time.
The EU's decision five years earlier imposed limits on the use of three neonics -- clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam -- saying they were "harmful" to Europe's honeybee population when used to treat flowering plants with nectar that attracts the insects. The court ruled on Thursday the commission "is entitled to consider that a risk to the colonies could not be ruled out" even if there is "scientific uncertainty at this stage as to the rate of mortality of individual bees." EU governments in 2018 voted in favor of widening the ban of neonicotinoids to apply everywhere, except for greenhouses. The commission has described the chemicals as "systemic," causing the entire plant to become toxic to bees.
The EU's decision five years earlier imposed limits on the use of three neonics -- clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam -- saying they were "harmful" to Europe's honeybee population when used to treat flowering plants with nectar that attracts the insects. The court ruled on Thursday the commission "is entitled to consider that a risk to the colonies could not be ruled out" even if there is "scientific uncertainty at this stage as to the rate of mortality of individual bees." EU governments in 2018 voted in favor of widening the ban of neonicotinoids to apply everywhere, except for greenhouses. The commission has described the chemicals as "systemic," causing the entire plant to become toxic to bees.
Monsanto (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that Bayer bet on their ability to lobby EU officials to go easy on them, allowing them to make huge profits. Though it looks like that bet didn't go as well as they thought it would.
Re:Monsanto (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, this is a weird case. Esp. this quote:
"even if there is "scientific uncertainty at this stage as to the rate of mortality of individual bees."
So, the system in Europe (at least here in Iceland, and I assume everywhere else) is rather different from in the US. You know in the US how you can buy pretty much any pesticide product? Here there's only a tiny handful of products available to the general public - soaps, neem, pyrethroids, etc. The really mild stiff. Everything else requires certification (which requires a course and test), registration (with fees), inspection (locked cabinet, etc), tracking of everything you buy, disposal requirements if it's pulled from the market, etc. Very strict.
On the "what's allowed on the market" side, they pair products with uses. They try to keep at least one product option available for treating every type of problem or need. But on ones that they consider environmentally or health problematic, they seek to replace them with anything else that comes along that has a better environmental / health profile.
In that regard, it is absolutely critical to establish that neonicotinoids are more hazardous than alternatives like organophosphates. The court's lack of interest in this factor strikes me as really bizarre. Most organophosphates are really nasty pieces of work, and I definitely don't want to see their usage increasing.
Re: Monsanto (Score:2)
"We have evidence that this stuff might end life on this planet. We don't have proof, but it's definitely a risk. So we'll ban it until we know it won't kill us all."
Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
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We have evidence that just about everything we use and exist in may end life on the planet. That's why you have risk management, so you gain perspective on how the risk fits in there, and what actually _should_ be done about it.
That's what's missing in here. People assert "It may (x)", and expect that to stand on its own. But you can say that about anything. What you need to do is weigh the cost of actually removing something, and still continuing an activity. In this case, it's a reversion to an older
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Agreed re: varroa. They're the most consistent global factor in colony collapse, and the best match for the most common symptoms.
That said, honeybees have a huge number of stressing factors that on average have gotten worse over the years, and the most stressed the hive, the more destructive varroa is to it. Modern hive management practices have also proven highly effective at spreading varroa.
Re: Monsanto (Score:3)
Should the burden of proof not be up to Bayer? If we have organisations that ask of this for medicines, surely it should be the same for pesticides?
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The thing is, this is a weird case. Esp. this quote:
"even if there is "scientific uncertainty at this stage as to the rate of mortality of individual bees."
So, the system in Europe (at least here in Iceland, and I assume everywhere else) is rather different from in the US. You know in the US how you can buy pretty much any pesticide product? Here there's only a tiny handful of products available to the general public - soaps, neem, pyrethroids, etc. The really mild stiff. Everything else requires certification (which requires a course and test), registration (with fees), inspection (locked cabinet, etc), tracking of everything you buy, disposal requirements if it's pulled from the market, etc. Very strict.
On the "what's allowed on the market" side, they pair products with uses. They try to keep at least one product option available for treating every type of problem or need. But on ones that they consider environmentally or health problematic, they seek to replace them with anything else that comes along that has a better environmental / health profile.
In that regard, it is absolutely critical to establish that neonicotinoids are more hazardous than alternatives like organophosphates. The court's lack of interest in this factor strikes me as really bizarre. Most organophosphates are really nasty pieces of work, and I definitely don't want to see their usage increasing.
Have patience will you, getting the EU to ban organophosphates is work that is making steady progress: https://cen.acs.org/environmen... [acs.org]
Re:Monsanto (Score:4, Informative)
you do want to feed people, right? All commercial farming uses pesticides. Including organic farming.
Organic though, as it can't use the selective researched pesticides uses some damnably unhealthy natural ones (read about the difference between pyrethrins vs pyrethroids for example; the natural one not only kills insects, but mammals, birds and just about everything else, the manufactured version only harms insects because it omits all the other toxic crap. The natural one is marked as "better" because it doesn't last quite as long, even though it devastates the environment around it in a random fashion for no reason).
If you ban organophosphates, farming will just have to revert to an even older insecticide. Which is even more toxic and wasteful.
If you achieve your aim of having no pesticides, then commercial farming in your residential area will cease to be viable.
Re: Monsanto (Score:2)
If you achieve your aim of having no pesticides, then commercial farming in your residential area will cease to be viable.
First: BS. It would just look different. Right now it's monocultures, overfertilization, pesticides. It can be dine differently, it's just more extensive. Not prohibitively more expensive, just somewhat more expensive.
Forcing companies away from that will have zero impact on the net outcome. It may make stuff more expensive, but currently prices are so much detached from what it *costs* to make stuff, being closer to what the customer is pepared to *pay* instead (that being a lot higher), that I'm not ecen
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First: BS. It would just look different.
Not at all bullshit. The viability of modern farming is the result of development of fertilisers. Even simply reverting to organic farming dramatically reduces yields.
Did we get by in the past? Yep. With billions of people less on the planet, spread out and not concentrated in megacities.
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The viability of modern farming is the result of development of fertilisers.
Ah, "the inevitability of status quo" argument... :-)
You are aware that you're using the phrase "modern farming" to describe a 110 year old technology [wikipedia.org]. Don't you find that ironic?
I'm no farmer. But I have plenty of close friends in farming -- both "modern farming" and actual modern farming. Some of them are starting up companies for various supplements, substrates etc that can easily replace nitrogen-based fertilizers and many herbicides/pesticides (the latter by selectively tuning soil for a particular pla
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you do want to feed people, right? All commercial farming uses pesticides. Including organic farming. Organic though, as it can't use the selective researched pesticides uses some damnably unhealthy natural ones (read about the difference between pyrethrins vs pyrethroids for example; the natural one not only kills insects, but mammals, birds and just about everything else, the manufactured version only harms insects because it omits all the other toxic crap. The natural one is marked as "better" because it doesn't last quite as long, even though it devastates the environment around it in a random fashion for no reason). If you ban organophosphates, farming will just have to revert to an even older insecticide. Which is even more toxic and wasteful. If you achieve your aim of having no pesticides, then commercial farming in your residential area will cease to be viable.
I'm fine with feeding people but if the food is drenched in highly toxic carcinogenic pesticides, I'd rather spend more money on bio farmed food. Now go home pour yourself a nice 3 liter flagon of organophosphate pesticide and drink it up.
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Re: Monsanto (Score:3, Informative)
The court's lack of interest in this factor strikes me as really bizarre
The court's job is just to interpret the law. 1) (the lower court) is Bayer breaking the law by selling X and 2) (the appeals court) did the regulatory body break the law by creating a regulation against X.
Seems as though the court decided that the regulatory body was within its powers to regulate a potentially harmful product. Regulating other harmful products is up to the regulatory body, so the court didn't consider it pertinent to "is regulator legally allowed to regulate product X?"
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That's because the argument is on legal technicalities, not actual science. It's the same thing that got the cancer payouts over Roundup. Because no scientist would say absolutely that it can _never_ cause cancer (because no real scientist would do this), then the lawyers used that loophole to say "Maybe it can, there's doubt, so payout needs to be made".
The environmental lobby is currently exceptionally powerful in pushing these kinds of things, and when you're hamstrung in the debate so thoroughly (all
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This was an appeal against the previous case, and from what I can tell, seems to have been aimed mostly at the formalities of the decision by the European Commission. In other words, Bayer AG was arguing that the EC was not allowed to take that decision, not that the decision was wrong.
From what I can tell, the argument that other alternatives are more dangerous was made in the original case and was dealt with there. If Bayer AG did not bring that up again in this appeal, then this court had no business rul
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They are. Too bees. You know, those creatures that contribute to about 1/3rd of our food supply [upenn.edu].
But by all means, let's kill those off in order to protect against treatable poisonings that are primarily attributable to mismanagement of a class of non-persistent pesticides. It's not as if you could apply less of the latter more carefully or anything.
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The court's lack of interest in this factor strikes me as really bizarre. Most organophosphates are really nasty pieces of work, and I definitely don't want to see their usage increasing.
Pieces of work for whom? The discussion is not just how damaging it is to a given environment or people, but to the complete food cycle. Sure it's a bit of a trolly problem but you need to weigh up risk of cancer or environmental damage with the wiping out of pollinators which have the effect of decimating our food supply.
Not all environmental impacts are created equal.
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The number of pesticides that an individual without certification over here can buy could probably be counted up on one hand. Maybe two if you start including things like diatomaceous earth. It's *extremely* limited.
Like, for example, you know how many products over here are available for the average consumer for treating soil grubs? *Zero*. There's not a single consumer product allowed on the market for treating soil grubs. All of them require certification and registration.
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Why does individual bees matter? Colonies are the important factor.
Re:Thank you EU (Score:5, Informative)
You made sure the red palm weevil killed off 2 of my 50-year-old palms and continues to ravage the entire mediterranean destroying all phoenix palms.
They didn't ban all pesticides, just the pesticides that are killing off the single most important pollinator species on the planet and indiscriminately devastating insect populations continent wide so untwist your panties and stop playing the drama queen, you'll still be able to source pesticides.
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They banned pesticides that allowed more specific targeting and were generally far less toxic in general (including to humans). That means we're going back to organophosphates. And holy shit are those things toxic compared to neonicotinoids, especially to mammals such as us humans.
In fact, the primary reason why neonicotinoids became popular is because they are far less toxic than organophosphates to humans. We're not going to "some nice things now that toxic thing is banned". We're going to a far more toxi
Re:Thank you EU (Score:4, Insightful)
They banned pesticides that allowed more specific targeting and were generally far less toxic in general (including to humans). That means we're going back to organophosphates. And holy shit are those things toxic compared to neonicotinoids, especially to mammals such as us humans.
In fact, the primary reason why neonicotinoids became popular is because they are far less toxic than organophosphates to humans. We're not going to "some nice things now that toxic thing is banned". We're going to a far more toxic thing now that toxic thing is banned.
I don't really care, neonicotinoids have completely collapsed insect populations over the whole of Europe. I'm not sitting in a corner crying my eyes out over this crap being banned like you are. Furthermore, just because I'm in favour of banning neonicotinoids I'm not the massive fan of organophosphates that you are assuming I am. From my point of view this is simply another victory in the fight to ban all of this revolting toxic gunk. Now that neonicotinoids have been banned organophosphates are simply next on the kill list. Soaking an entire continent in toxic poisons for months on end every year is not a long term sustainable solution. The agricultural industry is going to have to find better ways of dealing with insects like dialling down the monoculture.
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In a nutshell, you didn't need to add anything past "I don't care". That indicates your mind is not open to debate, evidence, or anything else that may allow you to risk manage, or rationally evaluate the situation. You don't want to hear it. You just want to remove things that scare you because you don't understand them.
That's a perfectly normal human reaction, but I suspect history will have this marked in the same category as the luddites in time.
Re: Thank you EU (Score:3)
In a nutshell, you didn't need to add anything past "I don't care". That indicates your mind is not open to debate, evidence, or anything else that may allow you to risk manage, or rationally evaluate the situation.
I'm sorry to have to chime in, my friend, but from where I stand it's you who isn't "open to debate, evidence". You had better read past " I don't care" because the rest of your parent's post was pretty well thought of in argumenting why neonicotinoids are not the lesser evil you believe them to be; they're just the evil you're perceiving less intensely because it's hurting you more indirectly, but just as much.
He also went on to describe true alternatives, like switching to a more sustainable type of agric
Re:Thank you EU (Score:4, Insightful)
And holy shit are those things toxic compared to neonicotinoids, especially to mammals such as us humans.
You know what is more toxic to humans? Starving to death as we destroy the ability to pollinate and therefore grow food.
In fact, the primary reason why neonicotinoids became popular is because they are far less toxic than organophosphates to humans.
Every product ever released on a market became popular because it solved a problem. That doesn't make it a good product, and it's popularity doesn't mean the issues identified are automatically null and void. Asbestos was a great building material until we found out there were some negative impacts. Lead was a fantastic anti-knock agent which dramatically increased the octane of petrol, to say nothing of its ability to make paint hold its colour. Unfortunately it may have contributed to the retardation of a portion of our population.
We're going to a far more toxic thing now that toxic thing is banned.
Toxic to whom? If you die it may be a price worth paying to not collapse our pollination ecosystem.
Re: Thank you EU (Score:1)
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I see you are an eco fascist.
Never heard the term but if it means exploring the impacts on the wider world and its ecosystem on the whole than rather just its immediate effect in isolation the sure I'll be happy to be called an eco fascist.
For you to welcome the death of a human to salve your conscience about insects is frankly monstrous.
On the other hand I'm going to call you stupid for thinking this was about a human vs insects. Reread my post and try again.
Re:Thank you EU (Score:4, Insightful)
The effect has been devastating. When we moved to the UK 20+ years ago, the garden was full of butterflies and other flying insects as well as birds chasing them. By 2018 it was EMPTY. We saw ONE butterfly in the whole of 2018.
That is pretty much all pollinating insects dead except an occasional bumblebee. They are slowly coming back, but at this rate it will be several decades until they are back to Y2K levels.
If the price will be having to cut a few trees and replant (or replace), so be it. That is worth it comparing to where we were heading.
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The question comes back to the simple one of "Do you want to feed people, or not". If you do, then pesticides are necessary.
Not if we eat the pests.
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And that would be good except the evidence for the harm to bees from neonicotinoids is controversial to say the least. Also, these pesticides are mostly used for seed dressing and not sprayed directly onto crops, by the time the plant has flowered the chemicals have long broken down.
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And your solution would be what, to spray every palm in the meditteranean with insecticide? No enviromental problem there!
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Interesting... (Score:2)
... that I should read about it here first, not from any of my European sources...